The'Surge' of Troops May Not Come to San Francisco, but the City Is Ready Anyway San Francisco is preparing for federal law enforcement's invasion of the Bay Area, whether it happens or not. Citizens protesting the threat of federal troop deployments in the San Francisco Bay Area held a rally on Thursday at SF City Hall. After months of deployments by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the National Guard across American cities, federal agents have been preparing to descend into San Francisco . Local resistance groups have been coordinating with activists in other cities across the country that have been besieged by federal law enforcement. Thousands of volunteers, coordinating through Signal group chats, Zoom calls, and social media posts, planned protests and spread the word that federal troops are on their way to San Francisco.

Salesforce's CEO backtracks after saying Trump should send troops into San Francisco In tech this week: The CEO of the city's largest private employer apologizes, Amazon Web Services' outage and OpenAI's Sora makes waves What I'm watching this week: South Park's caricature of Peter Thiel and his obsession with the antichrist . Read our reporting on the show's inspiration: Thiel's bizarre off-the-record lectures on the subject. And now, let's get into things. The co-founder and CEO of Salesforce, said last week that Donald Trump should make good on his threats to send the US national guard into San Francisco, despite resistance from local leaders. Even Marc Benioff's own public relations manager was aghast at his remarks, according to the New York Times .

He said he was "shocked by resistance" to San Francisco's Proposition C, which called for higher taxes on businesses to raise funds for addressing homelessness. Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square, is a prominent opponent, arguing the measure is unfair to Square and fintech startups. San Francisco voters approved Proposition C in November 2018, though the city has said it won't spend the money raised until legal questions are settled. On WeWork, whose plans for an initial public offering were derailed recently, Mr. Benioff said that "an IPO is like a spiritual cleanse." That's because going public earlier in its life forces a startup to do things like find a top CEO, he said.

Artificial intelligence can be a force for good, but society needs to be careful to make sure its negative aspects do not outweigh its positives, Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff told CNBC's Jim Cramer on Wednesday. "AI has tremendous opportunity, but technology is never good or bad, it's what we do with the technology that matters," the billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist said on "Mad Money." Benioff, co-CEO and chairman of Salesforce, said there could be "dramatic consequences" as AI use in the military accelerates, for example. The Pentagon released its first AI strategy in February. "But we can use AI for good as well," said Benioff, who is promoting "Trailblazer," the new book he co-authored with Salesforce executive Monica Langley.

This week at the World Economic Forum (WEF), an annual gathering that put tech executives at the same table as far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff called San Francisco the canary in the coal mine. "San Francisco is kind of a train wreck; we have a real inequality problem," he said. Benioff and Salesforce, which has the largest skyscraper on the San Francisco skyline, led the Prop C campaign, a $300 million business tax aimed at reducing homelessness in San Francisco that is currently held up in court. Benioff also asserted at the gathering in Davos, Switzerland that artificial intelligence is "a new human right" that all people deserve. "Those who have the artificial intelligence will be smarter, will be healthier, will be richer, and of course, you've seen their warfare will be significantly more advanced," he said.

A protester holds up a sign targeting Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff outside the company's headquarters in San Francisco on Monday. A protester holds up a sign targeting Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff outside the company's headquarters in San Francisco on Monday. Tech workers from Salesforce, Microsoft, Amazon and Google have been putting pressure on their CEOs to cut ties and end contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, and other government agencies. It's a rare occurrence for employees to tell their bosses to turn away business. But there is a growing concern among tech workers that the cutting-edge tools they create can be used in immoral ways.

CEOs of the world's leading companies have a global influence that stretches beyond their own business and commercial interests. The general public is increasingly looking to the people steering some of the largest companies in the world for their views on political and social issues. In a Financial Times article published last August, Rana Foroohar describes today's chief executives as "transnational leaders" who face a growing expectation, from both investors and the public, to speak out on issues. Given this growing public expectation, our team at BrandsEye decided to apply our combination of machine learning algorithms and human intelligence to assess public sentiment towards executives on Twitter. Rather than using the typical financial indicators that so often inform these indices, our analysis was based on the unsolicited views of Twitter users.

Should we think of AI as a basic human right? That was the question raised by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff in a session at the United Nations General Assembly yesterday. The backdrop for Benioff's comments was debate around the impact of technology and innovation on the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These were agreed back in 2015 as set of specific targets based on a sustainable development agenda with the overall goal of ending poverty, protecting the planet and ensuring prosperity. When the SDGs were laid down, there was a window of 15 years to hit the targets.

Today it's impossible to read business news without seeing some mention of artificial intelligence. Recent breakthroughs in machine learning and AI have unleashed a host of new experiences that can be delivered to customers, and companies both large and small look to capitalize. Large companies want to seize the opportunity to strengthen their existing positions, and small companies hope to fuel their rise to market leadership with these new technologies. As an investor at FirstMark, Matt Turck has seen the machine learning-first startups that are poised to change the way we work from up close. Here's a discussion of the way machine learning-first startups are built, which ones are pushing the ecosystem forward, and why they look so different than the SaaS startups that came before them: Sam: Matt, could you introduce yourself and talk a little about the work you do for the people who aren't familiar?

Today it's impossible to read business news without seeing some mention of artificial intelligence. Recent breakthroughs in machine learning and AI have unleashed a host of new experiences that can be delivered to customers, and companies both large and small look to capitalize. Large companies want to seize the opportunity to strengthen their existing positions, and small companies hope to fuel their rise to market leadership with these new technologies. As an investor at FirstMark, Matt Turck has seen the machine learning-first startups that are poised to change the way we work from up close. Here's a discussion of the way machine learning-first startups are built, which ones are pushing the ecosystem forward, and why they look so different than the SaaS startups that came before them: Sam: Matt, could you introduce yourself and talk a little about the work you do for the people who aren't familiar?